Complex tasks such as juggling produce significant changes to the structure of the brain, according to scientists at Oxford University.

牛津大学的科学家发现，诸如杂技类的复杂任务可以显著改变人脑的结构。

The people who took part in the study were trained for six weeks and had brain scans before and after.

Long term it could aid treatments for diseases like multiple sclerosis（多发性硬化）.

Diffusion MRI

The team at Oxford's Department of Clinical Neurology used a diffusion MRI（磁振影像） which is able to measure the movement of water molecules in the tissues of the brain.

The signal changes according to how many bundles of nerve fibres there are and how tightly packed they are.

Changes in grey matter, where the processing and computation in the brain happens, have been shown before, but enhancements in the white matter have not previously been demonstrated.

Three ball cascade

The scientists studied a group of 24 healthy young adults, none of whom could juggle.

They divided them into two groups.

One of the groups was given weekly training sessions in juggling for six weeks and was asked to practice 30 minutes every day the other 12 continued as normal.

After training, the 12 jugglers could perform at least two continuous cycles of the classic three ball cascade（小瀑布）.

Both groups were scanned using diffusion MRI before and after the training.

At the six week point, a 5% increase in white matter was shown in a rear section of the brain called the intraparietal（壁内的，顶骨内的） sulcus（槽，沟） for the jugglers.

This area has been shown to contain nerves that react to us reaching and grasping for objects in our peripheral vision（周围视觉）.

There was a great variation in the ability of the volunteers to juggle but all of them showed changes in white matter.

The Oxford team said this must be down to the time spent training and practising rather than the level of skill attained.

Dr Heidi Johansen-Berg, who led the team, said: "MRI is an indirect way to measure brain structure and so we cannot be sure exactly what is changing when these people learn.

"Future work should test whether these results reflect changes in the shape or number of nerve fib

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